News

I worked for Microsoft way back in the 1990’s. Once a year, all of the Microsoft faithful got together for a big love-in. Like high-priests that they were back then, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would preach. Like faithful parishioners, we lapped it up. At the end of this annual bash, we were all wound up like a highly strung Swiss watches. And off we went, for another year, gunning for the Top 3 “targets” that Bill and Steve had chosen for the coming months.

One name that cropped up over and over again during the "sermons" was Apple. Simply put, Microsoft hated Apple. They wanted to rid them from the business world.

And during the 90’s, they nearly succeeded.

Way back then, when Windows was emerging as the desktop powerhouse that it became, many reckoned that Apple had superior products. However, Microsoft outsold Apple in spades, mainly by distributing its product broadly on hardware made by many companies. Apple wanted control and, as a result sold less.

At the time, software developers wrote applications for the Windows PC market, which in turn attracted more customers, which attracted still more software developers to Windows. For the better part of two decades, Microsoft held the allegiance of software developers, relegating the Mac to the sidelines.

Fast forward 20 years. Today, the mobile smartphone is the new desktop. Nowadays, Microsoft is playing second fiddle. Google and Apple are leading the pack.

But the interesting thing is that Apple is still that same control freak!

Google, with their Android operating system (which, like Windows before it, has been made available to any hardware maker), is outstripping Apple in terms of apps sold. Smartphones running Android outsell iPhones more than two to one.

But, an interesting advantage that Apple has is that many app developers are completely loyal to Apple and continue to make applications first, and sometimes only, for iPhones. They find it easier to create software for Apple devices than for ones running Android. Their allegiance to Apple has helped make its devices the powerhouses they are for the company.

At these years WWDC – the developer conference for Apple die-hards – Apple is expected to introduce a new version of the iOS operating system that powers iPhones and iPads.

The news feed is the first thing that you see when you arrive on Facebook and it really is the fluid content rich feature that drives most of the engagement on the site. They are constantly making changes to the feed in an attempt to improve user experience (and in recent times to increase revenues through ads) and just this week Facebook introduced 3 major changes that will change what we all see in the feed. This can be confusing for the end user who wants to simply see their best friends and updates and photos from family but with so many developers and 3rd parties dependent on the news feed for distribution of their apps and Facebook themselves trying to figure out what you want to see more changes can be expected on an ongoing basis. In some ways a lot of the success that Facebook have had comes down to the constant changes and improvements that they make and the fact that they don’t listen to their users all that much. Here are 3 major changes that you will be seeing in your news feed on an ongoing basis…

Games Within The Feed

Games have always been one of the the things that keep people coming back and users engaged on the social network but they are a pain to get opened and launch at times. Facebook this week started rolling out new lightweight versions of the games that play right within the news feed. It is hoped that this will entice more users in to the full versions of the game and for developers it is a great way of getting people to play your game without ever leaving the news feed. You can read more about how this works in more detail here.

Trending Videos

Much has been made of the success of the new wave of video sharing apps on Facebook who are relying on the viral distribution of the ticker and news feed. Some of the content is pretty poor within these apps though which is why Facebook have just started testing a trending video feature which will help users discover more content based on what their friends are watching.

Starring Friends

Despite all of Facebook and Google’s best efforts to get us to start using lists to group our friends together it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Most people can’t be bothered making lists. In an attempt to find out the most relevant content to show you in your news feed Facebook are testing a new starring version on the site which makes it easy to tell them who you want to see more content from. This will drastically change which of your friend’s appear within your feed.

Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 stories that you simply have to read.

These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media, offering their thoughts and views regarding the biggest stories of the week.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy.

The software giant has introduced so.cl (pronounced "Social"). They just launched this new social network for students that features many Google+ and Facebook features. So.cl is being billed as a site for student collaboration and information gathering (isn't that where Facebook started?).

For now, Microsoft is calling it just an “experimental research project” and only making it available to students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse University and New York University.

You can currently add your name to the waiting list by logging in with Facebook. Ironic? Perhaps. But remember that Microsoft is a heavy investor in Facebook so I’d actually expect even more Facebook integration. Now, the big question: is there room for another social network? While Microsoft states (many times) that so.cl is not meant to replace any social network… it’s still a crowded space.

So.cl occupies an important niche (a social learning network similar to KnowU) so I’m definitely hoping for it to work out. Only time will tell.

Here's what the folks in Microsoft say about how so.cl works:

The So.cl search experience is powered by Bing; we use the public Bing APIs to display search result data. As students work together, they often look for the same content, and discover new shared interests by sharing results. These results can be web pages, images, or videos found through Bing. We see this trend today on many social networks, such as Twitter, where shared links spread virally and amplify popular content. So.cl experiments with this concept by letting you easily share links as you search.

Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 stories that you simply have to read.

These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media, offering their thoughts and views regarding the biggest stories of the week.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy.

Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 stories that you simply have to read.

These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media, offering their thoughts and views regarding the biggest stories of the week.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy.

Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 stories that you simply have to read.

These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media, offering their thoughts and views regarding the biggest stories of the week.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy.

Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 stories that you simply have to read.

These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media, offering their thoughts and views regarding the biggest stories of the week.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy.

In the Netherlands, not only can electric scooters be environmentally friendly, but it turns out that the engine noises required for them presents a unique advertising opportunity as Donimo’s Pizza found out.

Every day while researching the latest trends for clients or finding stories for the blog, I come across some brilliant reads that I bookmark and keep for myself to read when I have a bit of spare time.

Rather than being selfish and keeping all that great content to myself, I decided to start a feature here where I share ten must-read social media and technology stories of the day. Most of these will go beyond breaking news and will be insightful posts, articles or videos that are worth starting your day with.

A little video today that has nothing to do with marketing or social media, but that put a huge smile on my face and will hopefully do the same for you. These children will never have heard of Facebook or Twitter, but look how happy they are!

The popularity of Twitter in Japan is well known with the country being responsible for at least three of the most tweeted events in recent times. Now the company is planning to “aggressively” expand in the territory and attract more advertisers as local user growth exceeds the company’s global expansion, according to Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo.

Bloomberg report that Costolo, who was speaking to reporters in Tokyo, said that the site will continue to invest and hire in Japan and will also add engineers to its ranks, but didn’t specify how many people would be hired and how much would be invested into this venture.

The microblogging site, which has over 140 million active users globally according to Costolo, is attempting to branch out to other markets to reduce its dependence on the U.S. for revenue. Currently, the U.S. accounts for 90 per cent of Twitter’s revenue – which amounted to $139.5 million in 2011 – but this dependence will drop to 83 per cent by 2014 according to Emarketer.

According to Semiocast, a social media site located in Paris, the U.S still accounts for the majority of Twitter users worldwide, accounting for over 107.7 million accounts,more than three times the size of its nearest rival Brazil, which has 33.3 million users. Japan is close by with 29.9 million, but the site is extremely popular in the country, making it the perfect place for Twitter to expand.